A Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror (190 page)

67. Peter Sperry, “The Real Reagan Economic Record: Responsible and Successful Fiscal Policy,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, #1414, March 1, 2001, chart 1, “Federal Revenues and Expenditures, 1980–1993,” 3.

68. Gilder,
Wealth and Poverty
, passim, and his
Recapturing the Spirit of Enterprise
(San Francisco: ICS Press, 1992); W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm,
Myths of Rich & Poor: Why We’re Better Off Than We Think
(New York: Basic Books, 1999).

69. Bruce Bartlett, “Tariffs and Alloy of Errors,”
Washington Times
, April 1, 2002.

70. Steven F. Hayward,
The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order
(Boseville, CA: Prima Publishing, 2001).

71. Bernard Schafer, “The US Air Raid on Libya in April 1986: A Confidential Soviet Account from the Stasi Archives,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Cold War International History Project, 2001.

72. Reagan,
An American Life
, 466.

73. Ibid., 556.

74. Michael Moritz,
The Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer
(New York: William Morrow and Co., 1984).

75. Schweikart,
Entrepreneurial Adventure
, 435.

76. Joel Kotkin and Ross C. DeVol, “Knowledge-Value Cities in the Digital Age,” research paper from the Milken Institute, February 13, 2001, 2, available at http://www.milkeninst.org.

77. William T. Youngs, “Bill Gates and Microsoft,” in Youngs, ed.,
American Realities: Historical Episodes, From Reconstruction to the Present
, vol. 2, 3d ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1993); James Wallace and Jim Erickson,
Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire
(New York: Wiley, 1992).

78. See Adam D. Thierer, “How Free Computers are Filling the Digital Divide,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, #1361, April 20, 2000.

79. Stephen Moore and Julian L. Simon, “The Greatest Century that Ever Was: 25 Miraculous Trends of the Past 100 Years,” CATO Institute Policy Analysis, #364, December 15, 1999, Fig. 21, “Patents Granted by the United States,” 23.

80. Andrew and Mitrokhin,
Sword and the Shield
, 243.

81. Jacques Gansler,
Affording Defense
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989); Fens Osler Hampson,
Unguided Missiles: How America Buys Its Weapons
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1989); Thomas McNaugher,
New Weapons, Old Politics: America’s Military Procurement Muddle
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1989); Michael E. Brown,
Flying Blind
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); Jacob Goodwin,
Brotherhood of Arms: Geneva Dynamics and the Business of Defending America
(New York: Times Books, 1985).

82. Matthew Evangelista,
Innovation and the Arms Race
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 27–28; Peter J. Katzenstein, “International Relations and Domestic Structures: Foreign Economic Policies of Advanced Industrial States,”
International Organization
, 30, Winter 1976, 1–45.

83. Gilbert,
History of the Twentieth Century
, 596, but the entire “evil empire” speech appears in
An American Life
, 369–70.

84. Paul Hollander,
Political Will and Personal Belief: The Decline and Fall of Soviet Communism
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 11.

85. Lou Cannon, “Reagan’s Big Idea—How the Gipper Conceived Star Wars,”
National Review
, February 22, 1999, 40–42, quotation on 40.

86. Ibid.

87. For typical college-level textbook assessments of Star Wars, see Bailey, et al.,
American Pageant
, 998 (“Those who did not dismiss it as ludicrous feared that [it] might be ruinously costly, ultimately unworkable, and fatally destabilizing….”); Brinkley, et al.,
American History
, II:966, which emphasizes the Soviet reaction (“The Soviet Union reacted with anger and alarm and insisted the new program would elevate the arms race to new and more dangerous levels.”); Goldfield, et al.,
American Journey
, 1017, which questioned the feasibility of the technology, while still stressing the “destabilization” aspects (“All of the technologies were untested [which was completely untrue—they had almost all been tested for years, both in the U.S. and the USSR, and tested successfully]; some existed only in the imagination. Few scientists thought that SDI could work.”) Other texts had similar comments. Davidson, et al.,
Nation of Nations
, 1177, said, “Most scientists contended that the project was as fantastic as the movie [
Star Wars
].” Faragher, et al.,
Out of Many
, 953, stated Reagan “claimed, though few scientists agreed, that satellites and lasers could create an impregnable shield—” (in fact, Reagan claimed no such thing). Surprisingly, one of the most otherwise liberal texts, Jordan and Litwack’s
United States
, is fairly objective in its treatment—less than twenty words for the most important weapons proposal, arguably, in American history. What is astounding is how the technological questions and the destabilization questions, even when contained in the same paragraph, never raised the most obvious question by any of the authors: if the technology for Star Wars could not work, how could it possibly be destabilizing?

88. Johnson,
History of the American People
, 927.

89. Cannon, “Reagan’s Big Idea,” 40–42.

90. Hollander,
Personal Will
, 5.

91. Ibid., 100.

92. Ibid., 98.

93. Seweryn Bailer, “The Soviet Union and the West: Security and Foreign Policy,” in Seweryn Bailer, et al., eds.,
Gorbachev’s Russia and American Foreign Policy
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988), 457–91, especially 458.

94. Andrew and Mitrokhin,
Sword and the Shield
, 484.

95. Ibid., 220; Barbara von der Heydt,
Candles Behind the Wall: Heroes of the Peaceful Revolution That Shattered Communism
(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1993), 124.

96. Von der Heydt,
Candles Behind the Wall
, 124.

97. Reagan,
An American Life
, 11–15.

98. “Study Reveals ‘Politicization’ of Intelligence,”
Washington Times
, October 9, 2000.

99. Reagan,
An American Life
, 606.

100. Ibid., 402.

 

Chapter 21. The Moral Crossroads, 1989–2000

1. John Robert Greene,
The Presidency of George Bush
(Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2000); George Bush,
All the Best: My Life in Letters and Other Writings
(New York: Scribner, 1999); George Bush and Brent Scowcroft,
A World Transformed
(New York: Knopf, 1998).

2. Kenneth S. Baer,
Reinventing Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Clinton to Reagan
(Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2000), 12.

3. Steven M. Gillon and Cathy D. Matson,
The American Experiment
, 1265.

4. Paul Hollander,
Political Will and Personal Belief: The Decline and Fall of Soviet Communism
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 22.

5. Ibid., 3.

6. Ibid., 7.

7. Andrew and Mitrokhin,
Sword and the Shield
, 548.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Curtis Peebles,
Dark Eagles
(Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1995), 183.

11. Williamson Murray,
Air War in the Persian Gulf
(Baltimore: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1995), 26.

12. Rick Atkinson,
Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993); Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor,
The General’s War
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1995); Tom Clancy and Chuck Horner,
Every Man a Tiger
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1999); Frank N. Schubert and Theresa L. Kraus, eds.,
The Whirlwind War: The United States Army in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm
(Washington, DC: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1994).

13. Tom Keaney and Eliot Cohen,
Revolution in Warfare?
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995); Richard Reynolds,
Heart of the Storm: The Genesis of the Air Power in the Persian Gulf Air Campaign Against Iraq
(Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1995).

14. Benjamin S. Lambeth,
The Transformation of American Air Power
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 112.; Jeffrey Record,
Hollow Victory
(Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1993).

15. Peebles,
Dark Eagles
, 188.

16. Majors Michael J. Bodner and William W. Bruner III, “Tank Plinking,”
Air Force Magazine
, October 1993, 31; Lambeth,
Transformation
, 123.

17. Tony Cappacio, “Air Force’s Eyes in the Sky Alerted Marines at Khafji, Targeted Convoys,”
Defense Week
, March 18, 1991, 7.

18. Barry D. Watts, letter to the editor,
Foreign Affairs
, November/December 1997, 180.

19. Keaney and Cohen,
Revolution in Warfare?
, 91–92.

20. Lambeth,
Transformation
, 128.

21. Atkinson,
Crusade
, 342.

22. Victor Davis Hanson,
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power
, (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 364–65.

23. Jonathan Rauch, “Why Bush (Senior) Didn’t Blow It in the Gulf War,”
Jewish World Review
(online edition), November 5, 2001.

24. Gillon and Matson,
American Experience
, 1270.

25. Gerald Posner,
Citizen Perot: His Life and Times
(New York: Random House, 1996).

26. George Stephanopoulos,
All Too Human: A Political Education
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1999), 82.

27. Rhodes Cook, “Arkansan Travels Well Nationally as Campaign Heads for Test,”
Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report
, January 11, 1992.

28. David Maraniss,
First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).

29. Murrin, et al.,
Liberty, Equality, Power
, 1103.

30. Woodward,
The Agenda
(New York: Pocket Books, 1995), 122.

31. Gillon and Matson,
American Experience
, 1275; Brinkley,
Unfinished Nation
, 1014. The phrase used most by textbook authors is that the plan “pleased…virtually no one” (Murrin, et al.,
Liberty, Equality, Power
, 1104). A similar phrase appears in Goldfield et al.,
American Journey
, 1001, “something for everyone to dislike.” This implied that it was a solid concept so cutting-edge that it would offend because of its revolutionary nature. None of these sources come close to delineating the vast aggrandizement of power in the federal government that the plan represented, or the intrusion into personal liberties as basic as choosing one’s own doctor and pursuing the profession of one’s choice. They are not even considered as possible sources of the widespread opposition.

32. Woodward,
The Agenda
, 84.

33. Robert “Buzz” Patterson,
Dereliction of Duty
(Washington, DC: Regnery, 2003), 5.

34. Woodward,
The Agenda
, 125.

35. Stephanopoulos,
All Too Human
, 416.

36. Murrin, et al.,
Liberty, Equality, and Power
, 1105.

37. Brinkley,
Unfinished Nation
, 1019.

38. Once again, typical college textbooks seek to downplay the impact of the Contract or mischaracterize it entirely. Alan Brinkley, in
The Unfinished Nation
, claimed “Opinion polls suggested that few voters in 1994 were aware of the ‘Contract’ at the time they voted” (1015). Gillon and Matson, predictably, refer to the Contract as “a political wish list polished by consultants and tested in focus groups” (
American Experiment
, 1276), and Goldfield’s
American Journey
portrayed the campaign’s success as emanating from “personal animosity” (1001). Thomas Bailey et al. characterized the Contract as an “all-out assault on budget deficits and radical reductions in welfare programs,” and succeeded because Democrats’ arguments were “drowned in the right-wing tornado that roared across the land….” (
American Pageant
, 1002). Instead, at the time, many analysts on both the left and right viewed this as a watershed election about serious issues. See Michael Tomasky, “Why They Won: The Left Lost Touch,”
Village Voice
, November 22, 1994; Al From, “Can Clinton Recover? Or Will GOP Prevail?”
USA Today
, November 10, 1994; Gary C. Jacobson, “The 1994 House Elections in Perspective,” in Philip A. Klinkner, ed.,
The Elections of 1994 in Context
(Boulder: Westview Press, 1996); and Franco Mattei, “Eight More in ’94: The Republican Takeover of the Senate,” in Philip A. Klinkner, ed.,
Midterm
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). Although Clinton’s approval rating in the Northeast was 51 percent—hardly stellar for a liberal—in the rest of the country it averaged 45 percent.

39. Dick Morris,
Behind the Oval Office: Winning the Presidency in the Nineties
(New York: Random House, 1997), 100; Elizabeth Drew,
Showdown: The Struggle Between the Gingrich Congress and the Clinton White House
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 63.

40. See the PBS “Scorecard” on “Contract with America” items, available online at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/congress/scorecard.html.

41. Morris,
Behind the Oval Office
, passim.

42. See Dick J. Reavis,
The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998); “Waco—Rules of Engagement,” Fifth Estate Productions, Director William Gazecki, 1997.

43. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard,
The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories
(Washington, DC: Regnery, 1997), 5.

44. Brandon Stickney,
All-American Monster: The Unauthorized Biography of Timothy McVeigh
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1996).

45. Jayna Davis,
The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing
(Nashville, TN: WND Books, 2004); Peter Lance,
1000 Years for Revenge: International Terrorism and the FBI
(New York: Regan Books, 2003). Lance is unconvinced of a connection, but admits there are numerous suspicious links between McVeigh, Nichols, Ramzi Yousef, Iraq, and Al Qaeda. He relies extensively on the word of Yousef’s lawyer that there was no direct Al Qaeda support (308–18).

46. Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck,
American Terrorist
(New York: Regan Books, 2001).

47. Drew,
Showdown
, passim.

48. Evan Thomas, et al.,
Back from the Dead: How Clinton Survived the Republican Revolution
(New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997).